Author: Geek Planet

This article by David Klinghoffer is republished from Science and Culture. My Substack essay on the passing of James D. Watson is up now: No scientist, no human being, could leave a more tortured and contradictory legacy than geneticist James D. Watson, co-discoverer in 1953 of the elegant structure of the DNA molecule. He died this month at age 97. A noxious atheist, Watson unwittingly pointed the way toward scientific evidence of a creator. A noxious racist, citing supposed genetic evidence of African racial inferiority, Watson’s work with DNA suggests that human beings can’t in fact be reduced to “genes.”…

At a time when media careers are often measured in months rather than years, Joanna Saltz is something of an anomaly.This year marks a double milestone: the 10th anniversary of Delish, the Hearst food brand that’s become famous for its approachable, no-stress cooking philosophy, and editorial director Saltz’s own 10-year anniversary at its helm. When Delish launched in 2015, it was akin to a scrappy startup. Today, it’s a multimedia force, launching its first app (sponsored by DoorDash), and boasting a wildly loyal audience (34 million unique monthly visitors) and massive social media presence (3.2 million Instagram followers). The timing of the…

Lenovo’s leaked Copilot+ Legion laptops sound less like a raw power grab and more like an attempt to make gaming laptops easier to live with. According to a Windows Latest report, Lenovo is preparing new Legion 7a and Legion 5a models for a CES 2026 reveal, built around unannounced AMD Ryzen AI 400 series processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series Laptop GPUs. The idea is Lenovo AI Engine+ working with Legion Space to adjust power, fan speed, and efficiency in real time. The pitch, as described in the leak, is that you would spend less time tweaking profiles when you…

Job cuts made at Brandtech group media agency Jellyfish may be the latest symptom of a contracting advertising and marketing job market. The company cut as many as 50 roles at the end of October, following a slowdown in client spending, Digiday has learned.“Our existing clients were spending less money, some of those were retracting  the projects that they had planned, and that obviously led to a revenue hit,” said one exec whose role was cut in the layoffs and who spoke on condition of anonymity. Jellyfish confirmed the cuts. “Like everyone in marketing, our business is dynamic and we…

I’ve been discussing some of the rules for telling an effective time-travel story. Last Saturday, I offered a couple of examples from sci-fi where the trope done right. So now my aim is to put everything together and build a hypothetical plot from scratch. The first question The first question when dealing with a story about time travel is: How should time operate? As noted last time, we want to keep time itself as a soft magic system because theories about time are not well understood. We want to avoid the two extremes — implacable fate and the butterfly effect,…

In the last few years, affiliate marketing has become more competitive, causing brands to get more creative in their quests for influencers their competitors may not have already tapped. In turn, unexpected pairings are emerging: Mattress brands are teaming up with athletes and apparel brands are partnering with dancers, as companies rethink what a successful influencer strategy looks like. According to a 2024 Glossy+ Research Influencer Index, brands are also trying to diversify the people they work with, including partnering with creators outside of their categories to showcase products.  Earlier this year, the mattress brand Saatva used influencer partnerships to make a bigger push…

If you’ve been trying to find a “real” gaming laptop as a last-minute gift, this is the kind of spec sheet you usually see well north of $1000 even on sale. Between the 165Hz display, current-gen RTX 5060, and a surprisingly generous 32GB of RAM, this TUF F16 looks like an easy one-and-done purchase for someone who wants a machine that will last a few years. What you’re getting This configuration of the TUF Gaming F16 is built around a 16-inch FHD+ display with a 165Hz refresh rate, which is right in the sweet spot for fast-paced shooters and esports…

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet imagined a world where time could fold back on itself. The IAB Tech Lab’s new Agentic RTB Framework takes a more literal swing at the idea – or more precisely, by stripping out the lag that slows every real-time auction. The milliseconds saved can finally go toward making smarter decisions about programmatic auctionsThat’s the gist. Here’s what’s actually going on.  WTF is Agentic RTB Framework It’s a new technical standard for running real-time bidding that focuses on efficiency. It takes the existing RTB process and redeploys it inside a containerized environment so the different parts of a…

Ahead of the CES 2026, leaks about a new Lenovo ThinkPad Rollable XD Concept laptop have surfaced on the internet, but this isn’t like your usual power-packed notebooks. This one is about the potential successor to the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable AI PC, one which could feature a “vertically expanding display.” As reported by Windows Latest, the Lenovo ThinkPad Rollable XD Concept should transform a traditional 13.3-inch laptop into one with a 16-inch upright display. However, that’s the least interesting part about the device, as it is also said to feature a transparent lid that shows the screen when…

Back in June, Patrick Hann, the ad tech manager at the IAB U.K., was walking a room of ad ops execs through the basics of agentic AI. When he asked who had even heard the term, only about 20% raised their hands. That number would look very different now. The acceleration since that meeting has been hard to miss. Case in point: The arrival of the Agentic RTB Framework this week lands as the third agentic standard in under a month. The Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) surfaced first. User Context Protocol followed. Now, comes the auction layer. Taken together, these moves…